March 12, 2020 • 36 mins
Recent developments in Lee Boyd Malvo's case have forged new implications for the D.C. Sniper story. As our team investigates, we present a behind-the-scenes look at the Monster podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Monster d Z Sniper, a production of I
Heart Radio and Tenderfoot t V. The views and opinions
expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast
author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not
represent those of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot t V, or
their employees. Listener discretion is advised. Late last month, new
(00:27):
developments broke in the DC Sniper case. The Supreme Court
was set to rule on whether Lee Boyd Malvo should
be resentenced in Virginia. In two past cases, the Supreme
Court held that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile
offenders is unconstitutional. In February, before the Supreme Court made
a ruling, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a new bill
(00:50):
into law. The law gives parole eligibility to all juvenile
offenders tried, convicted, and sentenced within the adult justice system
in Virginia. As a result, Malvo agreed to withdraw his
appeal and the case has been dismissed by the Supreme Court.
This new law means Malvo can seek parole in Virginia.
(01:12):
These developments will have lasting implications not just on Malvo's fate,
but the fates of hundreds of others who committed felony
crimes as miners in Virginia. For that reason, Monster d
C Sniper is taking an extra week to conduct further research,
speak with more experts, and to update the finale of
this podcast. The main season will resume next week with
(01:35):
episode twelve with the investigation into the Sniper's killings leading
up to the DC attacks, including police interviews with Lee
Boyd Malvo and John Mohammed. In the meantime, we're happy
to present this recording of Alive behind the scenes event
from January. The creators of Monster Dacy Sniper were invited
(01:57):
to speak at the Savannah College of Art and Designs
Podcast Weekend. The event was hosted by the senior executive
director at SCAD Film, l Semen. Hi, everybody, my name
is Lee Semen, and I have the distinct pleasure to
head up the festivals and events produced by SCAD Film
(02:18):
with an incredible support team from all of our SCAD family,
over four campuses around the world, sixteen thousand students, over
forty thousand alumni, and seventy countries. GOAD Film was created
so that we could take full advantage of our SCAD
expertise and pre eminence and match it to the growing
expertise that industry was bringing to Atlanta, UH and create
(02:40):
opportunities for a collision of creative minds. And we've been
able to do that through established festivals like our SCAD
Savannah Film Festival, which has been in place over twenty years,
our a TV Fest which will be in its eighth year,
and this sort of new palette of festivals Animation Fest,
gaming Fest, and a whole year of events like this
this one SCAD podcast Weekend. Now, I have a question
(03:04):
for you, when is the last time that you counted
to seventy million? Our friends here today counted to seventy
million in their first season. They counted almost to seventy
million again, and they're about to count to more than
seventy million with season three. These guys know what they
are doing and they are led by Matt Frederick. Please
(03:24):
join me and welcoming him. Hi, everybody, my name is
Matt Frederick. I am currently a lead executive producer at
I Heeart Podcasts. We're here in Atlanta were based in
pont City Market. That's where we make a lot of
our shows. Back in two thousand six, I got an
internship at how Stuff Works. It was back on the
internet when you're on the internet just to read articles.
(03:46):
Do you remember that time? Does anybody remember a time
when that happened? Because How Stuff Works the whole time
it had been a thing made articles. A couple of
years later, we started making videos. So we tried to
do is take those articles and put them into video format,
and it worked really well for a while. We created
things like brain Stuff and one of the shows I
created called stuff They Don't want you to Know. It
(04:08):
was going really well, but there's this other emerging medium
called podcasts, and nobody knew really what it was. But
we figured, well, let's try taking those articles and turn
them into an audio format that you could just listen
to instead of having to read it. And from those
little experimentations from back in two thousand and eight two
thousand nine, we created some of the biggest podcasts that
(04:29):
exist on this planet today, Stuff you should Know, Stuff
you missed in history class, stuff Mom never told you.
And that was all through the website How Stuff Works,
which became stuff Media, the podcast arm of that website,
and it's so weird. We moved to Pont City Market
we're making all these shows, and we find out there's
this amazing true crime show unlike anything anybody has ever
(04:52):
heard before, and it's apparently being produced four floors above
our office. We had no idea that was happening. It
was this just a small group of people. They were
called Tenderfoot TV, and we were so impressed with the content.
We thought, Okay, let's contact these guys, Donald Lellbright and
Payne Lindsay, let's see what they're up to. We had
a quick meeting and just over coffee, we decided we
(05:14):
want to work together, and if we are going to
work together, what do we want to tackle? What story
do we want to tell. Both teams simultaneously wanted to
tell Atlanta's missing and murdered children's story because it was
not something that was being talked about. We felt like
it was a story that had been underserved, and it
was an underserved community in the first place, and we thought,
let's at least do our best to tell the stories
(05:37):
of the people who went through this, who lived through this,
and we created Atlanta Monster Atlanta, Georgia, nineteen seventy nine.
One by one, kids are going missing with no explanation
seven of the children have disappeared since March. A black
thirteen year old boy living in a housing project, good
(05:58):
in school, a loner working for extra money, and as
of Thursday night, missing Are you scared? Altogether nine children
between the ages of seven and fourteen have disappeared in
the last year. People from outside see this in the
context of what's happening to black people across the country.
Missing children have become priority number one at a p D.
(06:19):
We cannot as a community, as a city, carry on
business as usual. I want the people of Atlanta and
the nation to know that this administration is totally color blind.
When the producers of Up and Vanished in Health Stuff works,
you present an all new podcast, Atlanta Monster. Officially, according
(06:43):
to the list, there were twenty three children five adults
who were killed from nine the picture there is a
mug shot of Wayne Williams, the man who is still
in jail right now. He was convicted of killing two adults,
and we spoke with him extensively for this show. I
don't know if you guys realized this. There are so
many people in this city that believe that man killed
(07:05):
absolutely zero people. It was mind blowing to us to
know how many people held that as an opinion. We
thought it was worth talking to him to see what
he had to say. It premiered in January, and again,
this is stuff media. At that time, we get acquired
by I Heart Radio the end of We love the process,
we love the style, and we wanted to work again
(07:27):
with tender Foot TV. We're gonna find another time when
terror was running rampant in this city, when just going
about your daily life was a problem, and we looked
to San Francisco. Right at the turn of the Summer
of Love n nineteen sixty nine, there was what was
believed to be a man who was killing young people
in their cars at lovers lanes. This person was writing
(07:49):
letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. He
had captured a city, and he had put fear in
the hearts of everyone living in the entire area from
Napa Valley to Valleo to San Francisco. In the seventies,
as it was happening, a lot of us probably thought, Gee,
there's a lot going on, But looking back at a
(08:10):
decade of violence, it was just crazy. It was crazy time.
Most serial killers don't make any effort to involve media
or investigators. They're very secretive. They don't want attention. They
almost want their crimes to go unnoticed. But the idea
of committing a crime and then calling up the police
and bragging about it, that's a whole nother level of terror.
(08:34):
A man who wore a medieval style executioner's hood, who
has baffled the police and baffled the media. He seems
to crave publicity. He sent letters and cryptograms to newspapers
and the police. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
no a double murder. I did it here. We are
fifty years after the first Zodiac killing. In today's world
(08:56):
of forensics, old cases are being solved. We're talking about
the most famous cold case in the last century or
so in terms of it's drama and being unsolved. Who
doesn't want to know how it turns out, Dear editor,
this is the Zodiac speaking. If you do not print
(09:16):
the cipher by the afternoon of Friday, first of August,
I will go on to kill rampage Friday night. I
will cruise around all weekend, killing loan people in the night,
then move on to kill again. The best part of
it is that when I die, I'll be reborn in
paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves.
(09:40):
From My Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV,
this is Monster the Zodiac Killer. That impression of the
Zodiac Killer. That was an actual letter that was sent
to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearing it in that way,
I don't know if it has the same effect on you.
I hope it does. That's kind of the point of it.
But it really is spine tingling to me to know
(10:03):
that someone actually wrote that and felt that I wanted
everybody else to feel that way. It kind of just
fits that title, doesn't it. Monster whoever that was. So
here's the deal. We are back with the third iteration
of the Monster series. We went from one all the
way back to sixty nine. This year we're going to
two thousand two, to a time right after nine eleven,
(10:26):
to a time when the country was in fear already
and someone came along and struck fear in the hearts
of all of us. Again. We're gonna tell you all
about it tonight, because tonight we have the creators of
the third iteration. It is called Monster d C Sniper.
Tonight we have the host, Tony Harris, and we have
two of the producers, Trevor Young and Benjamin Kiebrick. And guys,
(10:48):
if you'd like to join me on stage, come on up.
We've got Trevor Young, this is Ben Keebrick. These guys
are the writers and really the backbone the creators of
the show. So, Ben, I want to pose this to you.
Can you tell us kind of a basic overview of
the case and how you came to learn all the
information about it? So one thing just to start, So
(11:09):
I actually I grew up in northern Virginia, so I
was a high school student when all this stuff was
going on. But then starting to research it, I realized,
even though I was there at the time and like
getting all that local news and stuff, I realized there
is so much about this case that either I never
knew or completely forgot about um. And that was one
of the reasons I wanted to tell this story, as
(11:29):
I felt like, well, if I don't know any of
this stuff, then I don't think many people do. So
October second, two thousand two, one person was shot. The
next day five people are shot. They're just going about
their everyday lives. A guy mowing a lawn, people filling
up their cars with gas, things like that. They seem
to have no connection to one another, but when they
(11:50):
analyzed the bullets, they realized that they're all coming from
the same rifle. There's someone out there kind of shooting
people and discriminately, and it's kind of like, now, what
do you do? No one knows is it terrorists, is
it a serial killer? What's going on. It's a very
suburban area. Immediately everyone was worried about their kids. A
couple of days later, there's a shooting at a middle school.
(12:12):
Outside that middle school, they find a terror card with
a cryptic note written on it, and kind of the
story just gets crazier and crazier. When I was doing
the research, one of the things is it seems like
there's a lot of misinformation out there. There are some
good books written about it that kind of cover narrow angles,
some kind of made for TV documentaries, but it felt
like no one had really put everything in one place
(12:36):
where it tried to to really give a feel of
what it was like to live through that. And that's
that's the thing that Monster does really well, is putting
people into a time and a place and kind of
trying to make our listeners feel what it must have
been like to go through that. So, Trevor, you tracked
down so many people and talked with them, tell us
(12:56):
the different perspectives that we're actually hearing from the show.
So off the bat, you can expect to hear anywhere
from forty to fifty people in this podcast. We've over
the last six to nine months interview just an insane
amount of people. But I think this was such a
big story that affected so many people that really that's
only a tiny fraction of the people we could interview. Right. Um.
(13:17):
Dr Caroline Namro was a pediatrician. She was just um
going about her day. She was dropping her kids off
at school. Uh, and she stopped to get gas on
October three, and she made eye contact with a man
and didn't really think anything of it. Then all of
a sudden, she hears a pop and the man goes
down on her car, bleeding and says, call the cops.
(13:40):
So she tries to resuscitate this man. She's calling the police.
She you heard her on the nine one one call
on that teaser, and she's doing I think what all
of us would do. She's just kind of reacting. She's
frankly kind of freaking out. I don't know how I
would react. I don't even know if I could call
nine one one. She told us her medical training kick
dan and she was able to go into gear and
(14:03):
really try and help this person. And it's a phenomenal
story to hear her tell it, and it's one of
the first things you hear in the podcast. There's a
lot of incredible stories like that, and I think what
we really want to do is really tell them to
their like full extent, to really let you know the
full story of what happened with each and every one
of these people from every perspective. So we're speaking with witnesses,
(14:34):
we're speaking with victims, families, were speaking with the law
enforcement officials from all of the varying organizations that were
a part of this massive manhunt. And one of the
people that was there at that time was this award
winning journalist named Tony Harris. You have been in television
for a long time, my friend, stop right there. When
(14:55):
when is the first time? Am I not allowed to know?
Was what was first TV gig? For real? My first
TV gig was eight two eight two. The first time
you're yeah, and you have been working consistently this whole time.
Knock would Yeah, I just want to know, why are
you taking all of your TV talents and putting them
(15:18):
into a pott Oh that's easy. Look, when you sign
up for this role as a journalist, you know what
you're saying to anyone who will listen to you is
that you want to tell amazing stories. You want to
dig deep, and you want to share those stories. You
want to investigate, you want to uncover, and you want
to report. That's what you sign up for when you
(15:38):
say you want to be a journalist, and that's what
I did forever ago. And once you do that, you
want to find as many venues as possible to tell
amazing stories. So sure, I've I've done that work at CNN,
I did that work for Al Jazeera in Dohan and
then again in New York. I have been really fortunate
(16:01):
to cover amazing stories, everything from the Southeast Asia tsunami
to Katrina to the Arab spring. And this is an
opportunity that I think it's really special now. This world
that you guys have created gives journalists like me an
opportunity to dig, to do the deep dive this is
a really deep dive, and I mean, I think that's important.
(16:23):
That's an important point to make here. So it's not
a situation that you see a lot in television news
where you got a fifteen seconds sound bite from someone.
You get an opportunity to actually hear someone explain not
just the moment, but what they were feeling and what
they were going through emotionally in that moment. That's why
I feel blessed to have this opportunity to tell this
(16:45):
story that I have kind of intimate knowledge of. You
remember this story, right, I mean you remember this. I
just need to feel some energy back from from the audience.
You do remember the story, right. This is two thousand two,
and I, um wow. I was working in Baltimore as
a news anchor for the Fox affiliate there and on
(17:06):
the second I remember us getting a call in our
newsroom about our shooting in Montgomery County, which was odd
and weird because you know, as was mentioned, Montgomery County
is kind of this pristine community high net Worth County
in Maryland. That would have led our newscast that night,
and the next day all all hell broke lose um
(17:27):
five people killed on the third and at that point
as my news brain was working at the time, I
knew we had a massive story and not enough people.
I'm thinking resources to cover the story. I'm thinking about
how do we get the information to people. We weren't
getting anything from police. Everyone was afraid that that it
was terrorism, and we just didn't have enough resources to
(17:50):
cover the story. And I don't know it. At some
point during the twenty three days of panic and Hell,
I can remember sort of wait a minute, You're you're
trying to figure out because as an anchor, you're getting
people on who are telling the story. And I think
in many cases we might have been part of the
problem and telling the story because we became as fixated
(18:10):
as anyone with the idea of the white van. You
remember the white panel truck. Remember that, how that sort
of dominated the story. And then the next thing was
all of the leaks that we were reporting on, and
how some of those leaks were coming from investigators close
to the case. So you're just conflicted, and you're wondering
if if you're doing a service to the public. But
(18:33):
we have people viewers who were clamoring to know everything
there is to know about this case, and so you're
feeling conflicted in everything else, and and I'm still thinking
as an anchor, as a reporter trying to get information.
At some point, and I don't know when, At some point,
um I started to think like a human being, and
(18:54):
I started to think about the people who had been killed,
their lives, their families. And then I it must have
been around the time when Iron Brown, thirteen year old,
he had a Tasker Middle School shot. Yeah, that's right,
that's right at Tasker Middle School. And I think it
(19:15):
was shortly or certainly in that moment, I began to
stop thinking about this purely as a story, with all
the adrenaline that goes along with being, you know, a
reporter or anchor on a huge story with national and
international interest, and I started to think about myself as
a father or two young children, and the story kind
(19:38):
of changes for me at that point. So there are
two routes I want to go with that, Steve Antoni.
The first one is how making a show like this
affects you when you are speaking to somebody like this,
then you're perhaps in an editing bay and listening to
it over and over again and really trying to pull
out the truth and the emotion in something horrific that
(19:59):
you're listening to. How has that affected you, guys, Has
it affected you guys at all? Or how do you
think about it? Well, I think all are most of
us here come from a journalism background, and I think
when you work in journalism for so many years, um,
you kind of in a way learn how to harden
yourself when you're talking and hearing and dealing with these stories.
(20:21):
So you know, when you go into this, when you're
in the moment you're talking to this person, you're doing
two things. You're you're one trying to get the story,
get the information really like talk with this person, empathize
with them, But you know, at the end of the
day also you are trying to connect with them on
an emotional level. And I think in the podcasting world,
we're trying to do that more over longer periods of time,
(20:43):
and it's harder to not let that affect you. It's
hard not to feel more emotionally invest in these people
when you were talking with them on multiple occasions, sometimes
for hours at a time. You know, these are not
like TV interviews that you see on a talk show.
These are people that when you leave the room with them,
or you get off the phone with them. You feel
(21:04):
like you know each other and there's a piece of
each other that you've shared that you are probably gonna
remember forever and you can't take back. And I personally
have walked away from a lot of interviews I don't
want to say shaken, but feeling like I had experienced
something myself that somebody had explained to me because they
(21:26):
you know, we're so open with me, because they went
to so much detail, because they gave me something so vivid,
I almost felt like I'd been there. And it's good
for us to hear that stuff because then we know
we have something powerful. One of the major purposes of
these shows is to learn something from the experience of
(21:46):
all of the people that have gone through all of
these things. People who have, you know, been on the
side of the law, chasing somebody down, or on on
the wrong side of a gun. It's basic storytelling stuff,
but it's also very important to us when we're making
a show like this, looking at the big picture and
thinking about ourselves. Then I want to jump to you
(22:06):
really quickly because one of the ways we do that
is to kind of time travel. In these shows, and
play archival footage from news organizations. Talk to me about
how we're using archival footage in this and how that's
helping to shape the story. But it's also telling us
some things about what was going on between law enforcement
and the media. So this is kind of an interesting
(22:28):
case from an archival perspective because it turned into a
national news story. I mean, you have George W. Bush
talking about it. You know, it's covered by all the stations,
and and there are kind of these massive trials that
happened afterwards where things like the nine one one calls
got entered into that that public records. We have a
(22:49):
lot of kind of primary documents of kind of what
was going on at that time, how people thought about it,
you know, people calling in to call in radio shows
to breasts, their their fears and their concerns. So we
really had a ton of stuff to work with and
and try to incorporate that kind of whenever we could.
(23:10):
Um and one of our recent episodes there is kind
of a particularly harrowing one call that we had a
big internal debate about, you know, whether to use and
how much to use, and there's kind of this balance
of you know, you want to respect the people that
went through these things, but it's also it's something that
(23:30):
really happened, and so kind of to accurately present what
was going on, do you want to kind of show
that in its kind of most dark and brutal fashion
there was tension occurring between the media and law enforcement
about what information should be put out into the public.
(23:51):
This is what I want to learn from you, Tony,
So from the newsperson's the journalist perspective, what do you
think about if information gets lead to you that is
really important for people's understanding about this case, even though
you know it's important to the case. Look, are you
going to hinder the investigation? Obvious at CNN when Jazira
got the Alqaeda tapes and you know, there was a
(24:13):
lot of back and forth and ringing of hands and
a lot of criticism from inside our own building of
Jazeera for going with those those tapes. When the reality
is if if we had gotten the tapes, we would
have we would have run those tapes, right. And so
if you get information like that that you know is
really hot and really provocative, what do you do with it? Well,
(24:34):
there's an editorial process. We all know that you just
described an editorial process, and I think you've got a way.
It's all that that's the old question of the public's
right to know, right, and the extent to which sharing
that information might hinder an investigation. I think there are
their circumstances where during that case we got it wrong.
(24:57):
Channel nine and the Washington Post should not have gone
with the information, in my opinion, on the Tarot card.
The reason they did is the fact that the writing
on the Tarot card essentially eliminated the thought that this
was foreign terrorism, right, was the reason I believe those
(25:19):
news organizations decided to go with that. I think it's
always the sort of balancing act, and there are serious
editorial meetings about this, and I think there are some
cases where we absolutely got it wrong. We didn't challenge
in the way that we should have, the whole idea
of the white panel truck. So, because you've been here
today and you've been hearing us talk about this, when
(25:40):
you go outside today and head home, all you're gonna
see our white panel trucks, that's all you're gonna see.
And so I suppose that's that's the way I feel
about it. We got we got a lot of things wrong. Um,
we should have questioned more closely. Uh, we should have
pushed back a lot more aggressively, but we were We
were operating at a moment when this nation was scared shipless.
(26:03):
Can I say that I just did? We just got
a note? He said, absolutely not, Tony, Tony, you have
to leave now. They're they're coming to get you too.
Could I add something to that? Yeah, police, So there
was another interesting element the way the media and the
investigation was interacting. And then maybe you can help me
with this. The snipers, the tarot card was one of
(26:25):
their kind of communications, but there were all these other
communications as well, all these demands for money, all these
demands for police to say certain things publicly. So both
the snipers and the investigation ended up using the media
to kind of, you know, as their own kind of megaphones.
They were kind of talking through the media at each
(26:46):
other because they weren't interacting directly, the investigators and the
snipers for the most part. There were a few phone calls,
but for the most part in the in a big sense,
they were really using press conferences and newscasts to get
information on both sides. And that kind of goes into
the archival things. So then you have actually these press
conferences of the chief of police for Montgomery County communicating
(27:10):
to the snipers and kind of, you know, none of
the reporters or the public at home really knows what's
going on. Is kind of these coded, cryptic messages that
are responding to the messages from the snipers, and it
it really was just kind of this very bizarre scenario
or it's kind of hard for the media to know
how to cover it, how much to cover it. Yeah,
(27:33):
but then that doesn't and you're not making this point,
but I will. It doesn't. It doesn't explain away the
irresponsibility in my opinion of local television stations, national networks
putting every Tom Dick and Harry On who claims to
be a law enforcement expert just doing rank speculation. And
(27:56):
that continues today. So that's kind of a pet peeve
of mine. Folks who are not a part of the investigation.
We're going to take some questions. Is anybody out there
have any questions, because if you don't, I'll keep asking them.
(28:18):
I have a question about your video trailers. So as
a podcast, you know it's strictly audio, um, but you've
created these incredible video trailers. Can you talk a little
bit about the benefit of that and why that's a
great question. I want to hear this answer. Okay, you
want me to just keep answering these okay, cool um.
Video trailers I think are very, very beneficial for any podcast,
(28:43):
and I think it's mostly what we use it for
social That's one of the major aspects is just being
able to put something on say Instagram or some other
platform that you can watch and get people excited about,
especially if you're telling a story that's already exciting just inherently,
but if you can show something that's exciting, that can
only make your show better and make your audience more interested. Uh.
(29:04):
In our case, we're working with Tenderfoot TV, guys who
came from video production. I have a video production degree, like,
so we we would get together and make these pretty,
I think, pretty great little video trailers. The other reason
that you want a video trailer, I think, especially if
you think your story is good enough to translate into
other mediums. One of the big things is happening with
(29:26):
podcasts now is that TV is very interested. TV producers
across the planet are interested in taking your podcast and
trying to turn it into a television show. You've done
all the work exactly. You've got the story, you've got
the pre production, you've got everything. You've got interviews, you've
got all the people that you want to get on camera.
It's uh, it's laid out for you. If and as
a TV executive that's not me, but as some TV
(29:47):
executive out there, I can imagine it being very great
if you walk in with essentially a sizzle reel, so
you will hear this podcast and and I guarantee you
you will think, Wow, that could be on television today.
And this is what I wanted to get into before
we switched over. It's it's exactly that. The way that
you guys use music, and the editing style and the
(30:08):
way you cut to and from a commercial, and the
cliffhangers and all of that. It gets me so pumped
and excited and scared and sad. Episode two of the show,
I love it. I cry every time I listened to
that episode. It moves me in the way a really
great HBO show or or some other television show does.
(30:28):
And it's because of the music, because of the stories,
the way you guys are putting it together, and there's
this voice that keeps talking to you, but it's just
so smooth and awesome whatever. So the only thing I
would add to that is that I've been making films
and I've had a television show on Discovery I D
so I've been in this true crime space for four
(30:50):
almost five years now, and what these guys are doing
in their storytelling rivals anything then I've been connected to
in true crime. So I don't get an opportunity often
to say really nice things to about these guys in
front of a room of people. But they are that
good at what they do, and if you haven't listened
(31:11):
to it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when
you listen. Thank you, And going back to the kind
of music for a second. I think one of the
interesting things about Atlanta Monster in the Monster series and
I guess up and vanished too. It's one of the
first kind of big podcasts that didn't come out directly
from public radio, you know, so like Cereal sarracan Ex
(31:32):
was on This American Life, a lot of people making
podcast kind of came from that background. Um, I think
this was one of the first podcast series to kind
of be made by someone who really had more of
like a TV aesthetic, and that goes into the way
you cut things, the way you use music, and we
try to keep the journalism, We try to keep that
(31:53):
same rigor, but maybe the way things are timed in
space and the musical cues a little bit more similar
to a TV documentary than you know, a standard public
radio story or something. Well, and they're not here tonight,
but I think we have a lot of that to
Tenterfoot TV absolutely frankly invented a lot of that model.
(32:14):
They came from kind of a documentary producing background. They
kind of brought that to podcasting with Up and Vanish
and then Atlanta Monster. Uh So, I mean they have
taught us a lot how to do that, and we
talked about music a lot and we should shut out
maps makeup. In Vanity Set. He does all of the soundtracks,
and I think he's really another team member, and I
(32:34):
think that's also kind of a unique thing to kind of,
you know, have one person doing the whole soundtrack, and
like we go back and forth about what we want
and he sends us stuff that's super inspiring and that's
a big part of our process. Those guys, they make
such exciting content, and really what we're trying to do
is you hit on the head. We were trying to
balance the excitement that they bring with this journalism murder,
(32:58):
and I think that's what we're achieving this season more
than we have ever before. So we're gonna do something here.
We're gonna play this quick clip. This is kind of
an example of the style, really using music, using a
cliffhanger to get you excited about wanting to listen to
either the rest of the show or the next episode.
So here we go next time on Monster d C Sniper,
(33:24):
I need an ambulance right here. God came out from
behind the store and uh and shop Paul arupa and uh.
Leading The pressure of the blood inside me was collapsing
my lungs. He drove and I shot because I was
(33:45):
the smallest. And back there later they told me, Oh,
they found you. John sent Lee to your door pretending
to be a salesperson. Oh, ma'am, I am buying one
that was gonna for somebody to me. Have you been
goot you? He said, So, don't get this twisted. Don't
(34:05):
believe that tim million dollar madness. He came there to
kill you, That said Malvo has talked about Mohammed having
a plan and to go create a utopian society in Canada.
Here you okay, Thank you guys, Thank you so much. UM.
(34:26):
Everybody's in the download DC Sniper. If you haven't done
Zodi at Killer or Atlanta Monster, download that one too.
Thank you to the guys from my heart, UM, and
thank you to all of you for making our first
god podcast weekend. It won't be the last watch out.
It was a success and we appreciate your contribution to that.
(34:46):
Scad film dot com has all the information you need
about upcoming events that we'll be doing. There is a
newsletter you can sign up for that. You can also
stop by SCAD dot e du to learn more about
everything that SCAD produces is here and in Savannah, we
have a great fashion museum called SCAD Fash. We have
events throughout the year and we really hope that we'll
(35:07):
see more of you at them. Thank you and good
night Monster. DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted
by Tony Harris and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf
of I Heart Radio alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick,
(35:28):
and Josh Thain. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Steadman
and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out the
first two seasons at Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer.
(35:49):
If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster
at i heeart media dot com, or you can call
us at one eight three three to eight five six
six six seven. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Monster d Z Sniper, a production of I
Heart Radio and Tenderfoot t V. The views and opinions
expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast
author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not
represent those of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot t V, or
their employees. Listener discretion is advised. Late last month, new
(00:27):
developments broke in the DC Sniper case. The Supreme Court
was set to rule on whether Lee Boyd Malvo should
be resentenced in Virginia. In two past cases, the Supreme
Court held that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile
offenders is unconstitutional. In February, before the Supreme Court made
a ruling, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a new bill
(00:50):
into law. The law gives parole eligibility to all juvenile
offenders tried, convicted, and sentenced within the adult justice system
in Virginia. As a result, Malvo agreed to withdraw his
appeal and the case has been dismissed by the Supreme Court.
This new law means Malvo can seek parole in Virginia.
(01:12):
These developments will have lasting implications not just on Malvo's fate,
but the fates of hundreds of others who committed felony
crimes as miners in Virginia. For that reason, Monster d
C Sniper is taking an extra week to conduct further research,
speak with more experts, and to update the finale of
this podcast. The main season will resume next week with
(01:35):
episode twelve with the investigation into the Sniper's killings leading
up to the DC attacks, including police interviews with Lee
Boyd Malvo and John Mohammed. In the meantime, we're happy
to present this recording of Alive behind the scenes event
from January. The creators of Monster Dacy Sniper were invited
(01:57):
to speak at the Savannah College of Art and Designs
Podcast Weekend. The event was hosted by the senior executive
director at SCAD Film, l Semen. Hi, everybody, my name
is Lee Semen, and I have the distinct pleasure to
head up the festivals and events produced by SCAD Film
(02:18):
with an incredible support team from all of our SCAD family,
over four campuses around the world, sixteen thousand students, over
forty thousand alumni, and seventy countries. GOAD Film was created
so that we could take full advantage of our SCAD
expertise and pre eminence and match it to the growing
expertise that industry was bringing to Atlanta, UH and create
(02:40):
opportunities for a collision of creative minds. And we've been
able to do that through established festivals like our SCAD
Savannah Film Festival, which has been in place over twenty years,
our a TV Fest which will be in its eighth year,
and this sort of new palette of festivals Animation Fest,
gaming Fest, and a whole year of events like this
this one SCAD podcast Weekend. Now, I have a question
(03:04):
for you, when is the last time that you counted
to seventy million? Our friends here today counted to seventy
million in their first season. They counted almost to seventy
million again, and they're about to count to more than
seventy million with season three. These guys know what they
are doing and they are led by Matt Frederick. Please
(03:24):
join me and welcoming him. Hi, everybody, my name is
Matt Frederick. I am currently a lead executive producer at
I Heeart Podcasts. We're here in Atlanta were based in
pont City Market. That's where we make a lot of
our shows. Back in two thousand six, I got an
internship at how Stuff Works. It was back on the
internet when you're on the internet just to read articles.
(03:46):
Do you remember that time? Does anybody remember a time
when that happened? Because How Stuff Works the whole time
it had been a thing made articles. A couple of
years later, we started making videos. So we tried to
do is take those articles and put them into video format,
and it worked really well for a while. We created
things like brain Stuff and one of the shows I
created called stuff They Don't want you to Know. It
(04:08):
was going really well, but there's this other emerging medium
called podcasts, and nobody knew really what it was. But
we figured, well, let's try taking those articles and turn
them into an audio format that you could just listen
to instead of having to read it. And from those
little experimentations from back in two thousand and eight two
thousand nine, we created some of the biggest podcasts that
(04:29):
exist on this planet today, Stuff you should Know, Stuff
you missed in history class, stuff Mom never told you.
And that was all through the website How Stuff Works,
which became stuff Media, the podcast arm of that website,
and it's so weird. We moved to Pont City Market
we're making all these shows, and we find out there's
this amazing true crime show unlike anything anybody has ever
(04:52):
heard before, and it's apparently being produced four floors above
our office. We had no idea that was happening. It
was this just a small group of people. They were
called Tenderfoot TV, and we were so impressed with the content.
We thought, Okay, let's contact these guys, Donald Lellbright and
Payne Lindsay, let's see what they're up to. We had
a quick meeting and just over coffee, we decided we
(05:14):
want to work together, and if we are going to
work together, what do we want to tackle? What story
do we want to tell. Both teams simultaneously wanted to
tell Atlanta's missing and murdered children's story because it was
not something that was being talked about. We felt like
it was a story that had been underserved, and it
was an underserved community in the first place, and we thought,
let's at least do our best to tell the stories
(05:37):
of the people who went through this, who lived through this,
and we created Atlanta Monster Atlanta, Georgia, nineteen seventy nine.
One by one, kids are going missing with no explanation
seven of the children have disappeared since March. A black
thirteen year old boy living in a housing project, good
(05:58):
in school, a loner working for extra money, and as
of Thursday night, missing Are you scared? Altogether nine children
between the ages of seven and fourteen have disappeared in
the last year. People from outside see this in the
context of what's happening to black people across the country.
Missing children have become priority number one at a p D.
(06:19):
We cannot as a community, as a city, carry on
business as usual. I want the people of Atlanta and
the nation to know that this administration is totally color blind.
When the producers of Up and Vanished in Health Stuff works,
you present an all new podcast, Atlanta Monster. Officially, according
(06:43):
to the list, there were twenty three children five adults
who were killed from nine the picture there is a
mug shot of Wayne Williams, the man who is still
in jail right now. He was convicted of killing two adults,
and we spoke with him extensively for this show. I
don't know if you guys realized this. There are so
many people in this city that believe that man killed
(07:05):
absolutely zero people. It was mind blowing to us to
know how many people held that as an opinion. We
thought it was worth talking to him to see what
he had to say. It premiered in January, and again,
this is stuff media. At that time, we get acquired
by I Heart Radio the end of We love the process,
we love the style, and we wanted to work again
(07:27):
with tender Foot TV. We're gonna find another time when
terror was running rampant in this city, when just going
about your daily life was a problem, and we looked
to San Francisco. Right at the turn of the Summer
of Love n nineteen sixty nine, there was what was
believed to be a man who was killing young people
in their cars at lovers lanes. This person was writing
(07:49):
letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. He
had captured a city, and he had put fear in
the hearts of everyone living in the entire area from
Napa Valley to Valleo to San Francisco. In the seventies,
as it was happening, a lot of us probably thought, Gee,
there's a lot going on, But looking back at a
(08:10):
decade of violence, it was just crazy. It was crazy time.
Most serial killers don't make any effort to involve media
or investigators. They're very secretive. They don't want attention. They
almost want their crimes to go unnoticed. But the idea
of committing a crime and then calling up the police
and bragging about it, that's a whole nother level of terror.
(08:34):
A man who wore a medieval style executioner's hood, who
has baffled the police and baffled the media. He seems
to crave publicity. He sent letters and cryptograms to newspapers
and the police. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
no a double murder. I did it here. We are
fifty years after the first Zodiac killing. In today's world
(08:56):
of forensics, old cases are being solved. We're talking about
the most famous cold case in the last century or
so in terms of it's drama and being unsolved. Who
doesn't want to know how it turns out, Dear editor,
this is the Zodiac speaking. If you do not print
(09:16):
the cipher by the afternoon of Friday, first of August,
I will go on to kill rampage Friday night. I
will cruise around all weekend, killing loan people in the night,
then move on to kill again. The best part of
it is that when I die, I'll be reborn in
paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves.
(09:40):
From My Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV,
this is Monster the Zodiac Killer. That impression of the
Zodiac Killer. That was an actual letter that was sent
to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearing it in that way,
I don't know if it has the same effect on you.
I hope it does. That's kind of the point of it.
But it really is spine tingling to me to know
(10:03):
that someone actually wrote that and felt that I wanted
everybody else to feel that way. It kind of just
fits that title, doesn't it. Monster whoever that was. So
here's the deal. We are back with the third iteration
of the Monster series. We went from one all the
way back to sixty nine. This year we're going to
two thousand two, to a time right after nine eleven,
(10:26):
to a time when the country was in fear already
and someone came along and struck fear in the hearts
of all of us. Again. We're gonna tell you all
about it tonight, because tonight we have the creators of
the third iteration. It is called Monster d C Sniper.
Tonight we have the host, Tony Harris, and we have
two of the producers, Trevor Young and Benjamin Kiebrick. And guys,
(10:48):
if you'd like to join me on stage, come on up.
We've got Trevor Young, this is Ben Keebrick. These guys
are the writers and really the backbone the creators of
the show. So, Ben, I want to pose this to you.
Can you tell us kind of a basic overview of
the case and how you came to learn all the
information about it? So one thing just to start, So
(11:09):
I actually I grew up in northern Virginia, so I
was a high school student when all this stuff was
going on. But then starting to research it, I realized,
even though I was there at the time and like
getting all that local news and stuff, I realized there
is so much about this case that either I never
knew or completely forgot about um. And that was one
of the reasons I wanted to tell this story, as
(11:29):
I felt like, well, if I don't know any of
this stuff, then I don't think many people do. So
October second, two thousand two, one person was shot. The
next day five people are shot. They're just going about
their everyday lives. A guy mowing a lawn, people filling
up their cars with gas, things like that. They seem
to have no connection to one another, but when they
(11:50):
analyzed the bullets, they realized that they're all coming from
the same rifle. There's someone out there kind of shooting
people and discriminately, and it's kind of like, now, what
do you do? No one knows is it terrorists, is
it a serial killer? What's going on. It's a very
suburban area. Immediately everyone was worried about their kids. A
couple of days later, there's a shooting at a middle school.
(12:12):
Outside that middle school, they find a terror card with
a cryptic note written on it, and kind of the
story just gets crazier and crazier. When I was doing
the research, one of the things is it seems like
there's a lot of misinformation out there. There are some
good books written about it that kind of cover narrow angles,
some kind of made for TV documentaries, but it felt
like no one had really put everything in one place
(12:36):
where it tried to to really give a feel of
what it was like to live through that. And that's
that's the thing that Monster does really well, is putting
people into a time and a place and kind of
trying to make our listeners feel what it must have
been like to go through that. So, Trevor, you tracked
down so many people and talked with them, tell us
(12:56):
the different perspectives that we're actually hearing from the show.
So off the bat, you can expect to hear anywhere
from forty to fifty people in this podcast. We've over
the last six to nine months interview just an insane
amount of people. But I think this was such a
big story that affected so many people that really that's
only a tiny fraction of the people we could interview. Right. Um.
(13:17):
Dr Caroline Namro was a pediatrician. She was just um
going about her day. She was dropping her kids off
at school. Uh, and she stopped to get gas on
October three, and she made eye contact with a man
and didn't really think anything of it. Then all of
a sudden, she hears a pop and the man goes
down on her car, bleeding and says, call the cops.
(13:40):
So she tries to resuscitate this man. She's calling the police.
She you heard her on the nine one one call
on that teaser, and she's doing I think what all
of us would do. She's just kind of reacting. She's
frankly kind of freaking out. I don't know how I
would react. I don't even know if I could call
nine one one. She told us her medical training kick
dan and she was able to go into gear and
(14:03):
really try and help this person. And it's a phenomenal
story to hear her tell it, and it's one of
the first things you hear in the podcast. There's a
lot of incredible stories like that, and I think what
we really want to do is really tell them to
their like full extent, to really let you know the
full story of what happened with each and every one
of these people from every perspective. So we're speaking with witnesses,
(14:34):
we're speaking with victims, families, were speaking with the law
enforcement officials from all of the varying organizations that were
a part of this massive manhunt. And one of the
people that was there at that time was this award
winning journalist named Tony Harris. You have been in television
for a long time, my friend, stop right there. When
(14:55):
when is the first time? Am I not allowed to know?
Was what was first TV gig? For real? My first
TV gig was eight two eight two. The first time
you're yeah, and you have been working consistently this whole time.
Knock would Yeah, I just want to know, why are
you taking all of your TV talents and putting them
(15:18):
into a pott Oh that's easy. Look, when you sign
up for this role as a journalist, you know what
you're saying to anyone who will listen to you is
that you want to tell amazing stories. You want to
dig deep, and you want to share those stories. You
want to investigate, you want to uncover, and you want
to report. That's what you sign up for when you
(15:38):
say you want to be a journalist, and that's what
I did forever ago. And once you do that, you
want to find as many venues as possible to tell
amazing stories. So sure, I've I've done that work at CNN,
I did that work for Al Jazeera in Dohan and
then again in New York. I have been really fortunate
(16:01):
to cover amazing stories, everything from the Southeast Asia tsunami
to Katrina to the Arab spring. And this is an
opportunity that I think it's really special now. This world
that you guys have created gives journalists like me an
opportunity to dig, to do the deep dive this is
a really deep dive, and I mean, I think that's important.
(16:23):
That's an important point to make here. So it's not
a situation that you see a lot in television news
where you got a fifteen seconds sound bite from someone.
You get an opportunity to actually hear someone explain not
just the moment, but what they were feeling and what
they were going through emotionally in that moment. That's why
I feel blessed to have this opportunity to tell this
(16:45):
story that I have kind of intimate knowledge of. You
remember this story, right, I mean you remember this. I
just need to feel some energy back from from the audience.
You do remember the story, right. This is two thousand two,
and I, um wow. I was working in Baltimore as
a news anchor for the Fox affiliate there and on
(17:06):
the second I remember us getting a call in our
newsroom about our shooting in Montgomery County, which was odd
and weird because you know, as was mentioned, Montgomery County
is kind of this pristine community high net Worth County
in Maryland. That would have led our newscast that night,
and the next day all all hell broke lose um
(17:27):
five people killed on the third and at that point
as my news brain was working at the time, I
knew we had a massive story and not enough people.
I'm thinking resources to cover the story. I'm thinking about
how do we get the information to people. We weren't
getting anything from police. Everyone was afraid that that it
was terrorism, and we just didn't have enough resources to
(17:50):
cover the story. And I don't know it. At some
point during the twenty three days of panic and Hell,
I can remember sort of wait a minute, You're you're
trying to figure out because as an anchor, you're getting
people on who are telling the story. And I think
in many cases we might have been part of the
problem and telling the story because we became as fixated
(18:10):
as anyone with the idea of the white van. You
remember the white panel truck. Remember that, how that sort
of dominated the story. And then the next thing was
all of the leaks that we were reporting on, and
how some of those leaks were coming from investigators close
to the case. So you're just conflicted, and you're wondering
if if you're doing a service to the public. But
(18:33):
we have people viewers who were clamoring to know everything
there is to know about this case, and so you're
feeling conflicted in everything else, and and I'm still thinking
as an anchor, as a reporter trying to get information.
At some point, and I don't know when, At some point,
um I started to think like a human being, and
(18:54):
I started to think about the people who had been killed,
their lives, their families. And then I it must have
been around the time when Iron Brown, thirteen year old,
he had a Tasker Middle School shot. Yeah, that's right,
that's right at Tasker Middle School. And I think it
(19:15):
was shortly or certainly in that moment, I began to
stop thinking about this purely as a story, with all
the adrenaline that goes along with being, you know, a
reporter or anchor on a huge story with national and
international interest, and I started to think about myself as
a father or two young children, and the story kind
(19:38):
of changes for me at that point. So there are
two routes I want to go with that, Steve Antoni.
The first one is how making a show like this
affects you when you are speaking to somebody like this,
then you're perhaps in an editing bay and listening to
it over and over again and really trying to pull
out the truth and the emotion in something horrific that
(19:59):
you're listening to. How has that affected you, guys, Has
it affected you guys at all? Or how do you
think about it? Well, I think all are most of
us here come from a journalism background, and I think
when you work in journalism for so many years, um,
you kind of in a way learn how to harden
yourself when you're talking and hearing and dealing with these stories.
(20:21):
So you know, when you go into this, when you're
in the moment you're talking to this person, you're doing
two things. You're you're one trying to get the story,
get the information really like talk with this person, empathize
with them, But you know, at the end of the
day also you are trying to connect with them on
an emotional level. And I think in the podcasting world,
we're trying to do that more over longer periods of time,
(20:43):
and it's harder to not let that affect you. It's
hard not to feel more emotionally invest in these people
when you were talking with them on multiple occasions, sometimes
for hours at a time. You know, these are not
like TV interviews that you see on a talk show.
These are people that when you leave the room with them,
or you get off the phone with them. You feel
(21:04):
like you know each other and there's a piece of
each other that you've shared that you are probably gonna
remember forever and you can't take back. And I personally
have walked away from a lot of interviews I don't
want to say shaken, but feeling like I had experienced
something myself that somebody had explained to me because they
(21:26):
you know, we're so open with me, because they went
to so much detail, because they gave me something so vivid,
I almost felt like I'd been there. And it's good
for us to hear that stuff because then we know
we have something powerful. One of the major purposes of
these shows is to learn something from the experience of
(21:46):
all of the people that have gone through all of
these things. People who have, you know, been on the
side of the law, chasing somebody down, or on on
the wrong side of a gun. It's basic storytelling stuff,
but it's also very important to us when we're making
a show like this, looking at the big picture and
thinking about ourselves. Then I want to jump to you
(22:06):
really quickly because one of the ways we do that
is to kind of time travel. In these shows, and
play archival footage from news organizations. Talk to me about
how we're using archival footage in this and how that's
helping to shape the story. But it's also telling us
some things about what was going on between law enforcement
and the media. So this is kind of an interesting
(22:28):
case from an archival perspective because it turned into a
national news story. I mean, you have George W. Bush
talking about it. You know, it's covered by all the stations,
and and there are kind of these massive trials that
happened afterwards where things like the nine one one calls
got entered into that that public records. We have a
(22:49):
lot of kind of primary documents of kind of what
was going on at that time, how people thought about it,
you know, people calling in to call in radio shows
to breasts, their their fears and their concerns. So we
really had a ton of stuff to work with and
and try to incorporate that kind of whenever we could.
(23:10):
Um and one of our recent episodes there is kind
of a particularly harrowing one call that we had a
big internal debate about, you know, whether to use and
how much to use, and there's kind of this balance
of you know, you want to respect the people that
went through these things, but it's also it's something that
(23:30):
really happened, and so kind of to accurately present what
was going on, do you want to kind of show
that in its kind of most dark and brutal fashion
there was tension occurring between the media and law enforcement
about what information should be put out into the public.
(23:51):
This is what I want to learn from you, Tony,
So from the newsperson's the journalist perspective, what do you
think about if information gets lead to you that is
really important for people's understanding about this case, even though
you know it's important to the case. Look, are you
going to hinder the investigation? Obvious at CNN when Jazira
got the Alqaeda tapes and you know, there was a
(24:13):
lot of back and forth and ringing of hands and
a lot of criticism from inside our own building of
Jazeera for going with those those tapes. When the reality
is if if we had gotten the tapes, we would
have we would have run those tapes, right. And so
if you get information like that that you know is
really hot and really provocative, what do you do with it? Well,
(24:34):
there's an editorial process. We all know that you just
described an editorial process, and I think you've got a way.
It's all that that's the old question of the public's
right to know, right, and the extent to which sharing
that information might hinder an investigation. I think there are
their circumstances where during that case we got it wrong.
(24:57):
Channel nine and the Washington Post should not have gone
with the information, in my opinion, on the Tarot card.
The reason they did is the fact that the writing
on the Tarot card essentially eliminated the thought that this
was foreign terrorism, right, was the reason I believe those
(25:19):
news organizations decided to go with that. I think it's
always the sort of balancing act, and there are serious
editorial meetings about this, and I think there are some
cases where we absolutely got it wrong. We didn't challenge
in the way that we should have, the whole idea
of the white panel truck. So, because you've been here
today and you've been hearing us talk about this, when
(25:40):
you go outside today and head home, all you're gonna
see our white panel trucks, that's all you're gonna see.
And so I suppose that's that's the way I feel
about it. We got we got a lot of things wrong. Um,
we should have questioned more closely. Uh, we should have
pushed back a lot more aggressively, but we were We
were operating at a moment when this nation was scared shipless.
(26:03):
Can I say that I just did? We just got
a note? He said, absolutely not, Tony, Tony, you have
to leave now. They're they're coming to get you too.
Could I add something to that? Yeah, police, So there
was another interesting element the way the media and the
investigation was interacting. And then maybe you can help me
with this. The snipers, the tarot card was one of
(26:25):
their kind of communications, but there were all these other
communications as well, all these demands for money, all these
demands for police to say certain things publicly. So both
the snipers and the investigation ended up using the media
to kind of, you know, as their own kind of megaphones.
They were kind of talking through the media at each
(26:46):
other because they weren't interacting directly, the investigators and the
snipers for the most part. There were a few phone calls,
but for the most part in the in a big sense,
they were really using press conferences and newscasts to get
information on both sides. And that kind of goes into
the archival things. So then you have actually these press
conferences of the chief of police for Montgomery County communicating
(27:10):
to the snipers and kind of, you know, none of
the reporters or the public at home really knows what's
going on. Is kind of these coded, cryptic messages that
are responding to the messages from the snipers, and it
it really was just kind of this very bizarre scenario
or it's kind of hard for the media to know
how to cover it, how much to cover it. Yeah,
(27:33):
but then that doesn't and you're not making this point,
but I will. It doesn't. It doesn't explain away the
irresponsibility in my opinion of local television stations, national networks
putting every Tom Dick and Harry On who claims to
be a law enforcement expert just doing rank speculation. And
(27:56):
that continues today. So that's kind of a pet peeve
of mine. Folks who are not a part of the investigation.
We're going to take some questions. Is anybody out there
have any questions, because if you don't, I'll keep asking them.
(28:18):
I have a question about your video trailers. So as
a podcast, you know it's strictly audio, um, but you've
created these incredible video trailers. Can you talk a little
bit about the benefit of that and why that's a
great question. I want to hear this answer. Okay, you
want me to just keep answering these okay, cool um.
Video trailers I think are very, very beneficial for any podcast,
(28:43):
and I think it's mostly what we use it for
social That's one of the major aspects is just being
able to put something on say Instagram or some other
platform that you can watch and get people excited about,
especially if you're telling a story that's already exciting just inherently,
but if you can show something that's exciting, that can
only make your show better and make your audience more interested. Uh.
(29:04):
In our case, we're working with Tenderfoot TV, guys who
came from video production. I have a video production degree, like,
so we we would get together and make these pretty,
I think, pretty great little video trailers. The other reason
that you want a video trailer, I think, especially if
you think your story is good enough to translate into
other mediums. One of the big things is happening with
(29:26):
podcasts now is that TV is very interested. TV producers
across the planet are interested in taking your podcast and
trying to turn it into a television show. You've done
all the work exactly. You've got the story, you've got
the pre production, you've got everything. You've got interviews, you've
got all the people that you want to get on camera.
It's uh, it's laid out for you. If and as
a TV executive that's not me, but as some TV
(29:47):
executive out there, I can imagine it being very great
if you walk in with essentially a sizzle reel, so
you will hear this podcast and and I guarantee you
you will think, Wow, that could be on television today.
And this is what I wanted to get into before
we switched over. It's it's exactly that. The way that
you guys use music, and the editing style and the
(30:08):
way you cut to and from a commercial, and the
cliffhangers and all of that. It gets me so pumped
and excited and scared and sad. Episode two of the show,
I love it. I cry every time I listened to
that episode. It moves me in the way a really
great HBO show or or some other television show does.
(30:28):
And it's because of the music, because of the stories,
the way you guys are putting it together, and there's
this voice that keeps talking to you, but it's just
so smooth and awesome whatever. So the only thing I
would add to that is that I've been making films
and I've had a television show on Discovery I D
so I've been in this true crime space for four
(30:50):
almost five years now, and what these guys are doing
in their storytelling rivals anything then I've been connected to
in true crime. So I don't get an opportunity often
to say really nice things to about these guys in
front of a room of people. But they are that
good at what they do, and if you haven't listened
(31:11):
to it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when
you listen. Thank you, And going back to the kind
of music for a second. I think one of the
interesting things about Atlanta Monster in the Monster series and
I guess up and vanished too. It's one of the
first kind of big podcasts that didn't come out directly
from public radio, you know, so like Cereal sarracan Ex
(31:32):
was on This American Life, a lot of people making
podcast kind of came from that background. Um, I think
this was one of the first podcast series to kind
of be made by someone who really had more of
like a TV aesthetic, and that goes into the way
you cut things, the way you use music, and we
try to keep the journalism, We try to keep that
(31:53):
same rigor, but maybe the way things are timed in
space and the musical cues a little bit more similar
to a TV documentary than you know, a standard public
radio story or something. Well, and they're not here tonight,
but I think we have a lot of that to
Tenterfoot TV absolutely frankly invented a lot of that model.
(32:14):
They came from kind of a documentary producing background. They
kind of brought that to podcasting with Up and Vanish
and then Atlanta Monster. Uh So, I mean they have
taught us a lot how to do that, and we
talked about music a lot and we should shut out
maps makeup. In Vanity Set. He does all of the soundtracks,
and I think he's really another team member, and I
(32:34):
think that's also kind of a unique thing to kind of,
you know, have one person doing the whole soundtrack, and
like we go back and forth about what we want
and he sends us stuff that's super inspiring and that's
a big part of our process. Those guys, they make
such exciting content, and really what we're trying to do
is you hit on the head. We were trying to
balance the excitement that they bring with this journalism murder,
(32:58):
and I think that's what we're achieving this season more
than we have ever before. So we're gonna do something here.
We're gonna play this quick clip. This is kind of
an example of the style, really using music, using a
cliffhanger to get you excited about wanting to listen to
either the rest of the show or the next episode.
So here we go next time on Monster d C Sniper,
(33:24):
I need an ambulance right here. God came out from
behind the store and uh and shop Paul arupa and uh.
Leading The pressure of the blood inside me was collapsing
my lungs. He drove and I shot because I was
(33:45):
the smallest. And back there later they told me, Oh,
they found you. John sent Lee to your door pretending
to be a salesperson. Oh, ma'am, I am buying one
that was gonna for somebody to me. Have you been
goot you? He said, So, don't get this twisted. Don't
(34:05):
believe that tim million dollar madness. He came there to
kill you, That said Malvo has talked about Mohammed having
a plan and to go create a utopian society in Canada.
Here you okay, Thank you guys, Thank you so much. UM.
(34:26):
Everybody's in the download DC Sniper. If you haven't done
Zodi at Killer or Atlanta Monster, download that one too.
Thank you to the guys from my heart, UM, and
thank you to all of you for making our first
god podcast weekend. It won't be the last watch out.
It was a success and we appreciate your contribution to that.
(34:46):
Scad film dot com has all the information you need
about upcoming events that we'll be doing. There is a
newsletter you can sign up for that. You can also
stop by SCAD dot e du to learn more about
everything that SCAD produces is here and in Savannah, we
have a great fashion museum called SCAD Fash. We have
events throughout the year and we really hope that we'll
(35:07):
see more of you at them. Thank you and good
night Monster. DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted
by Tony Harris and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf
of I Heart Radio alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick,
(35:28):
and Josh Thain. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Steadman
and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out the
first two seasons at Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer.
(35:49):
If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster
at i heeart media dot com, or you can call
us at one eight three three to eight five six
six six seven. Thanks for listening.
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